update

For those who haven't heard, we did not buy our place at auction. It was a learning experience. We went to the auction with a friend and a cashier's check in hand. There was one other property up for auction. It was a very laid back auction with only a handful of people there. For the 2 properties there were only 4 people there to bid, one of those 4 were us. Both properties ended up being "bought" by the bank that already owned the properties. We were the only one there to actually bid on our property besides the bank. The bank set the opening bid and it was set at $212,000. The place is only worth $10,000 more than that. That means the bank will now contact us before our lease is up the end of May and let us know if they are wanting to put the place up for sale or if they would want to rent it to us again. So until we hear from them we won't look for any other rentals.

We are also waiting to hear from Dallas. The person in charge there hasn't even decided to post the job yet, so it might be awhile yet. Or just another thought, since Jake and I have been together God has planned changes out so well for us. He will close a door in the most perfect timing, then immediately open another in such an obvious way there is no question in what we are supposed to do. Maybe the job will open up just in time for us to move the end of May so we don't have to step in another contract. Only time will tell.

As of the two mini loves of my life, they are growing and learning constantly. Amelia is now a roller queen. One second she is in one place on the floor and the next she is half way across the living room running into the furniture. She has also found her feet and loves playing with them. She has always been a fantastic sleeper, until 4 months rolled around. Now she fights going to sleep. Hopefully if I am consistent enough I can get her to start falling asleep on her own again. I really don't want to get into holding her until she starts to drift off like I still have to do with Aleigh. Thankfully they both sleep well once they fall asleep and are both good about going back to sleep if they wake in the middle of the night. Its just those transitions my girls have problems with.

Aleigh is getting better about talking. She still says mama, Dada and dad. But she has also added "hi" to the list several days ago. She won't say it too often just if she wants to. Hopefully over the next month she will add another word or two to the list so her Dr. won't worry.

Cute story of the week. Amelia was sitting in her little booster type chair that has toys around it. She loves that toy and was in it for about an hour. She then wanted out and was getting cranky. Aleigh and I were sitting on the floor playing. I said to Aleigh "We need to get sister out of her chair". Aleigh then runs over before I could even get up, grabs Amelia's hands and pulls her out of the chair and Amelia lands on her belly on the floor perfectly happy just looking up at Aleigh in awe. Goofy girls.

Starting on the 20th I am starting a new diet. I have never been into diets. I only wanted to work out, count my calories and try to eat healthier items. Well I have only lost 1lb over several months even though according to the amount of calories I eat I should lose 1lb. A week. Also running 3 times a week for 20-30 mins each time and still I am not getting anywhere. For about a month I was losing inches and lost about 11 inches total off my body but was not losing the lbs. So in a couple days I am going to test how I do with no grains of any type and no sugar of any kind for a month, along with the running and see if that helps. My Dr. tested to see if I have a thyroid problem and I don't so there should be no reason for me to not lose the weight. Wish me luck! I am addicted to my sweets and carbs so a full month is going to be hard! Haha

Today is the day

We go to the auction of our place today. Either we basically win the lottery and walk away with this place for no money at all, or we find out we have to move today. I am hoping for the first option.

We have not heard back about the job possibility in Dallas. The lady was on vacation all last week. Hopefully we will hear from them soon as we are still hoping it will work out.

Both the girls are starting to try to talk more. We decided to take the paci away from both of them except for when sleeping. They have both done really well. Aleigh's words still aren't clear but since she is actually trying to talk now is great improvement.

Amelia went to the Dr just over a week ago. It is interesting to see the differences between her and Aleigh. Aleigh had her 3&1/2 month checkup just one calendar day later than Amelia just a year ago. Their lengths were the exact same and Amelia was 1 oz more in weight than Aleigh was at that age. Very interesting. In some ways I feel like this year is on repeat as Amelia progresses on the same timeline Aleigh did last year.
Aleigh is becoming such a big help with Amelia. She will help roll her over when Amelia is frustrated. When I ask her to find me sister's paci, she finds and brings it to me. She has been helping me burp her for months now. When I say we need to rock sister she runs to the swing and starts rocking.

Yesterday I held both of them and read them a book. This was the first time I attempted this, and Aleigh sat there the whole time with a grin on her face and her forehead resting on Amelia, and giving her kisses. She sure does love her sister.

One thing I am still struggling with is finding the time to cook and clean. Aleigh is constantly making a mess. Our place always looks unrecognizable. I know it wont last forever though. Plus with all the sippy cups and bottles I have to wash. Look at the picture of all the cups and bottles. It fills up half of t
he deep sink we have.

I have been running for about 10 weeks now my goal is to run in a 5k in april. I am now at just over 2 miles so I still have a mile to go. I average about 12 mins a mile so I am pretty slow but that doesnt matter. It is getting frustrating though. I have been trying to lose this baby weight and with running 3 days a week and eating about 1300 calories a day I should be losing 1lb. a week. It has been more like 1 lb. a month, very frusrating.

Anyways, love to u all.

Kiddos

Lately Aleigh has been throwing fits daily. It is not fun! She will scream her little head off for oh about 10 mins. before she calms down. It will be for all sort of different reasons like changing her diaper, not giving her something she wants or not paying her attention. Yesterday she was mad I was feeding Amelia and not able to hold her after a diaper change (which she hates) so the whole time I fed Amelia, Aleigh screamed at the top of her lungs while rolling on the couch next to me. Jake and I are still talking about how to handle these breakdowns. So far we just say screaming is not acceptable and I will talk to u when u are through then we ignore her until she stops since most of the time it is our attention she wants and we dont want her to think oh I can just scream to get their attention. My Dr. mentioned time out but I am not too sure how to do that at her age. I think she would just keep following me, and with my hands also full with Amelia I feel like that could get complicated. I know some do time out in the crib but wouldnt that make them think bedtime is punishment? I want Aleigh to only think of bed as a good thing.

Anyways to some cute things. Aleigh's new thing to do is to take out Amelia's paci then put it back in, then take it out, over and over again. Sometimes she will try to put it in her nose or her eye if I don't catch her fast enough. Oh boy. Haha Amelia most of the time doesn't even mind this game she just thinks Aleigh is fascinating to watch.

Another fun fact is Amelia thinks pat-a-cake is funny and Aleigh likes to do the motions along with us. I have made up a different more logical version of pat-a-cake and am now wondering if that was a bad idea. At costco the other day a lady was trying to play the game with Aleigh and Aleigh started to do my version of the game lol. I am worried she is going to go to school one day and show everyone my version and not know the normal version. Hmmm

So this next saturday jake and I are going to go see the Lion King show. Should be fun to see. It starts at 8pm so we are hoping Aleigh will go to bed by 7 and stay asleep for my friend Nikki as she doesnt do well with other people. She has known Nikki since she was born and sees her atleast every other week sometimes more. I dont understand her stranger anxiety especially since Nikki is not even a stranger. Hopefully it will somewhat end as time goes on and hopefully she will just sleep well that night.

This sunday we are going on a whale watching hike with our small group from church! It should be fun it is a group with two other families. One family has 2 boys, one close to Aleigh's age. The other family has 3 girls, one also close to Aleigh's age. Very blessed to know them all. Should be a fun hike!

Then not this tuesday but the next is the auction for the place we are living in. It should be interesting to see what happens.

The weekend after the auction the 4 of us are going on a trip to the big island! We will see a black sand beach, a green sand beach, stay in a tiny cabin in volcano national park, see a waterfall, visit the southern most point in the US, and stay one night and day on a pretty beach. It will be nice. We have never went on a vacation just us before without visiting friends or family so this will be different than most our trips. Only 3 nights but it should be fantastic!

The next two weeks will be a blast and hopefully sometime in those 2 weeks Jake will hear back from the job in Dallas!

Decisions

What is going on in the kids world? Amelia has been rolling from her back to her belly for almost a week now! I think its funny how she used to not like belly time until she could put herself on her belly, now she all of a sudden loves it. She only gets frustrated when she can't roll back to her back, but soon enough she will get there. It is interesting Aleigh learned belly to back before back to belly. She is 14 weeks old as of yesterday! I might even retire her 0-3month clothes today and try to sell them and use that money for 24 month size clothes for Aleigh.

Aleigh is now 15 months. She had her dr. Appointment a couple days ago. She is growing great. She is starting to lose her baby chub which is a little sad. She is now back to the 50% for height and weight. She really does NOT like the Dr. She just cries and cries and cries. I don't think the years of dr. Appts will be fun with her. Aleigh is also getting her 8th tooth in so she is very cranky, she doesnt do well while teething.

Now for the major life events. The place we are living in is going to auction the beginning of March and if it sells for cheap we just might buy it. You have to have 10% down so it would have to sell for under $90, 000 for us to buy it. It is estimated worth is $220, 000 so that would be an amazing deal! We have lived in it for 1&1/2 yrs so we know all the issues with the place. Really only small things would need to be fixed. So we are trying to figure out all the details with that to make sure it is a wise investment. Second, Jake could possibly be getting a job in Dallas, at the dallas aquarium. His coworker worked there for many years and moved up in the company. He called for Jake and talked to the person in charge and even though there isnt a position open they are very interested in him and will talk to the owner and see if they will open a position for him. They already know what position he would work in and everything. So our lives right now are in limbo. We have no idea what will happen. It could be neither and we have to just find another rental, it could be Dallas and we get pre-approved and try to immediately buy a house there, it could be no job but this house we are in now and we would own it until we move than sell it for close to what it is worth at that time. Or both this house and the job happens! Yikes! That is the scary but exciting one.

It could be such a good deal to buy this house so we cant pass it up. We are informed that if nobody else bids we could walk away buying it for a dollar. But if it was to go for our maximum amount then we took out every penny of our savings. The nice thing is apparently we will get our rent back for the last 3 months though so then we could use that towards moving costs. But the other desicion is if we buy here should we rent it for a couple years as the rental market is amazing in hawaii or do we immediately turn around and sell it. If we sold it for $200, 000 we could turn around and use that extra money for a nice house in dallas. That is what I would prefer to do but time wise I dont know how it would work out. Plus the possibilty of owning a place with no incoming rent and paying rent for another place in dallas is a little scary even though the mortgage for the auction house would be so little.

Please be praying for us as this is a true test for us to trust God in what he is doing. We are blind to many things and those things are all going to happen around the same time. The auction is in less than 3 weeks. If we dont get it we have less than 60 days to find another rental. The job in Dallas will probably let us know within the next couple weeks if they want him but apparently would want him very soon if they do. If that is the case then we have to either sell or transport all our stuff to Dallas and find a place to live there.

Changing

Being a mom has turned me into an insomniac. I never had any sleep problems before motherhood. I am so used to babies waking me through the night that after 6 hrs of interrupted sleep I can no longer sleep. It usually after Amelia eats the last time around 4-6am I will then be wide awake and can't go back to sleep. So here I am writing a blog.

Its amazing how fast my girls are growing up. Amelia is almost the age where she is going to start advancing pretty fast. It seemed like things really get moving once they start rolling over. She is 12 weeks now and Aleigh started rolling over at 15 weeks! Her movements are now less jerky and her neck muscles are getting stronger and stronger. She is slowly starting to giggle more. I have never been good at getting Aleigh to laugh when she was little I would try so hard then Jake would do the smallest thing and she would laugh uncontrollably. Well the same thing is happening with Amelia haha. Oh well I guess I am just the cuddle monster not so much the source of laughter. I'll take it.

Aleigh is also changing all the time. I did think we were going to have to enroll her in dancing as she loved dancing. Now she will still dance to music here and there but not quite like before. Before we heard a police car with its sirens drive by and there she was dancing to it. Now she doesn't even come up to me with her pooh bear or mickey mouse stuffed toy asking me to make it sing and dance. I kinda miss those days already. Oh well. Now our days are filled with climbing. Yipee! :-/ YIKES! She is such a daring little girl. Not scared of anything it seems, except for strangers. She can now climb on the couch and loves climbing on the big diaper boxes, you know the ones from costco, that are pretty tall. Diaper boxes don't have much standing space once on. It scares me every move she makes but somehow she has learned how to get on and off them. She has had a few falls but I know that is how she is going to learn her limitations on what her body can do and how to do it safely. The first night she found out she could climb onto the couch she thought it was the funnest thing. She decided it was a fun place to run and to try to walk directly off of. I would say the couch is for sitting and if she wouldnt sit I would put her on the floor. Well there she was on it running again. Boy oh boy. While I was taking care of Amelia I see her walking over to the armrest to go up a little higher she starts to try and stand on it. I got so freaked out for the first time I used her full name. ALEIGH GRACE MADISON! She got so startled she froze haha. Thankfully she didnt fall off the armrest. But I scared her enough she cried for awhile :( she doesn't like doing anything wrong, it makes her sad. When I tell her not to do something she either laughs at me and thinks its a game and tries again or she will burst out in tears. We will have fun with this over the years, I'm sure :(

I do love how my girls are learning and growing and will definately enjoy the days ahead. I will miss some of the cute moments of the past though as they start doing new things.

Love being a mom!

It doesn't matter how many times in a day I have to read "spot's first walk", or "brown bear brown bear what do you see" I love being a mom. I was made for this gig. Those are currently 2 of Aleigh's favorite books. She also loves any book that has horses in them. That thought excites me, maybe we will have a horseback rider in the family! I believe she is about to start talking. She has learned so many words. In the books I ask her to point to such and such and she is really good about remembering animal names. How can she not be an animal lover as jake and I are her parents? ;)

It doesn't matter how tired I am from my morning run I will gladly still chase Aleigh through the house. I go running 3 times a week now. I am training myself to run in a 5k. Out of the 8 week program I am in week 5! Where we live has a ton of hills so it is exhausting, but Aleigh's favorite game right now is chase and to see her happy I will happily chase her around the house until we are both exhausted.

It doesn't matter how I want to just sit down and relax when I can, instead I have to wash bottles and sippy cups,  the laundry, do the dishes and make meals. I try my best to be prepared so when Jake is home we can all have fun together. Sometimes I get Aleigh's food ready for the whole day the night before. It doesn't matter what tv shows might be tempting me my family is more important. Whatever way I can spend more time with them is the best time spent.

It doesn't matter how many times I have to pick up all of Aleigh's messes. She loves to explore and she loves to make a mess. I am currently taking pictures of all these messes to put side by side in a photo album. Every mess to me is a memory watching her discover and learn something new. One day she will learn how to pick up the mess so I won't have to but every kid needs to make a mess once in a while, it's another way to learn. Aleigh is very particular about her books. If she walks in her room and sees them in the bookcase where they belong she immediately throws them on the floor, even if she doesn't look at a single picture apparently they belong on the floor. Who am I to tell her no? This is part of her personality. I will show her how we put them back up and as long as she learns one day to pick up her mess why stop her from making the mess.

It doesn't matter how many times a day I have to sing the "winnie the pooh" and "mickey mouse" theme song, I will love seeing Aleigh smile and dance to the songs. Aleigh has a few pooh bear stuffed animals and one mickey mouse stuffed animal. One day she brought them to me so I decided to sing their songs while making them dance. What a fun mistake that was haha. Throughout the day she kept bringing them back to me and dancing asking me to sing the songs and how could I say no? Now months later everyday, multiple times a day I have to sing those songs who knows how many times.

It doesn't matter how many times through the night I have to wake and feed Amelia. Thankfully she usually only eats twice a night now, but even when it was 4 times a night it was ok. If it meant I got to see the smile on her face as she fell back asleep with a full belly, I was in heaven. She is just a precious little girl. I love hearing her giggle in the middle of the night. I just can't wait until she giggles while awake. The last couple days she had given slight giggles while awake but I almost missed them they were so slight.

It doesnt matter how many times I have to sing lullabies to both of them. When I feed Amelia I have to also preoccupy Aleigh because she gets a little jealous. Usually I give her something to drink. Sometimes I try and time her snack time to be when Amelia eats. Sometimes though when Amelia is hungry and Aleigh is jealous and crying I just sing to them. They both calm down and to have two calm quiet happy little ones at the same time is always music to my ears no matter how many songs I have to sing.

It doesn't matter how many booboos I have to kiss or how many tears I have to wipe away all the smiles, hugs and giggles make up for all the difficult times. I wouldn't have my life any other way. I just love being a mom and am so incredibly blessed to have these 2 girls to take care of everyday, they amaze me no matter how many dirty diapers I have to change, which can also be pretty amazing. ;-)

New things

While I sit here wide awake at 1 am I just thought I would update everyone on the new happenings in our lives.

Jake applied for a job in Denver, Colorado. We are still trying to figure out if we are supposed to be staying in Hawaii for several more years or if it is time to move on. We really don't want to move right now because we love it here and are extremely tired of moving. But since we have to move from our apartment anyways we thought we would test the waters to make sure we are doing what God wants us to do.

We are also looking for a place here in Hawaii. It is hard to find a rental in our price range that looks atleast somewhat nice and that accepts our dog.

We have also decided we want to see what we would qualify for a mortgage. If we qualify for enough we are tempted to go to the auction and possibly buy the place we are in now. The only downside is we are in a tiny place, we have already outgrown it. But we know everything else we can afford out here will be about the same size. Plus when we do move back to the mainland we can always rent it out and make money off of it. The rental market out here is great. Everything goes really fast.

We will be coming back to Tulsa for a vacation in the spring! We won't buy tickets until we know for sure if we are supposed to move/stay as that would be a waste of money if we ended up moving. But we will be back soon. I can't wait to see everybody again!

Aleigh is becoming very jealous when I do anything with Amelia. If I feed her, Aleigh cries, if I hold her she also cries. Yesterday she got angry with me because I was holding a crying Amelia and wasn't reading a book to her, so she shoved the book in my face, the corner hit me. I told Aleigh that it hurt and said don't do that so then she grabs the book again lays it on top of amelia's face and cries. I take the book off her face and once again tell her I can't read to her right now as her sister needs me and to not hurt her sister. She then goes picks up a toy, looks at me with this mad face and throws her toy down on the ground as hard as she can. Lol it makes me laugh now thinking about it. Boy do we all have some learning ahead of us. I think she might be starting the temper tantrums a little early.

Aleigh does love her little sister though as long as she is still getting all the attention. When I burp Amelia she likes helping me and gets a kick out of patting her back like mommy does. She also likes playing with her baby doll and trying to hold the doll like mommy does her sister and she will rock with the doll. She also is becoming very good about being gentle with her sister. She used to touch her a little too hard but has learned what gentle means and when I say the word, she smiles and barely touches Amelia. The other day I also saw Aleigh putting her head next to Amelia's so they touched and just leaving it there for awhile.

I really want to try to go back to sleep now. After 14 months of waking up through the night I am so used to being awake that it is becoming hard for me to go back to sleep after waking. I really hope that ends. I used to be the best sleeper. If I dont get much sleep anymore it is only my fault since my two girls are pretty good about sleeping at night. I should have no excuse for not getting 8 hrs each night. I pray my habit does not continue as I am very tired each day.

Love to all
Jennifer